


A Voice In The Dark

by RainingInExile



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Coma, First Meetings, Hospitals, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainingInExile/pseuds/RainingInExile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames meet for the first time in a hospital. Eames is hiding from some men with guns. Arthur is a coma patient. They could both use a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Based very loosely on ideas from [this prompt.](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/19632.html?thread=46921904#t46921904)

_“Hello?”_

Arthur’s hand clenches on the die in his pocket. Against all odds, he’s found him. The voice is a little rougher than he remembers, but then, Arthur hasn’t hear this voice in years outside of his dreams. Even then, it had felt dreamlike as this stranger’s voice beckoned to him in the quiet dark of his mind. Teased and lured him back to the waking world. Arthur has no doubt he would have been lost forever without it.

 _“…Hello?”_ The man asks again, sounding puzzled.

Arthur had turned in a few good favors for this phone number. He’d thought it was impossible, long given up trying, but someone whispered the name Eames and that’s all Arthur’s ever had to go on trying to track his savior down.

In some strange twist of fate, it turns out Eames has been moving in the same circles as Arthur for some time now, making his name as probably the best forger in the game.

Arthur wants to say something. Ask if he remembers that boy he read to when Arthur was laying in a hospital bed comatose and alone. Say thank you, finally. Eames probably never intended to see him after the hospital though. It’s likely he assumes Arthur is either already dead or still laying in that bed. If he thinks of Arthur at all.

_“…is anyone there?”_

Arthur presses a button, ending the call, and pulls over his laptop. There are other ways to show gratitude.


	2. John Doe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this chapter has been rewritten a little.

Eames walks with purpose, but does not rush. His heart pounds in his chest at the several block chase he’s just come out of, and he fights the instinct to glance behind him through the crowd of hospital patrons for his pursuers. He’s not certain if they spotted him ducking in here, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Hospitals definitely rank high on the list for great places to lose a tail, at least in Eames’ book. Airports are still higher, but with hospitals there’s a similar mix of people from all sorts of classes and races so it’s easy to blend in. Not to mention everyone’s got somewhere to be, and no one really wants to run into anyone they know in a hospital so no one’s eager to stop you for an idle chat or look at you twice if you’re a bit rude when you brush passed.

He’s nearly at the end of the long main hallway when he hears a commotion from the entryway. Likely his pursers, brandishing guns and fake badges and making all sorts of problems for people. It would seem someone did spot him coming in after all. Still, he’s got a great head start, and hospitals are notoriously confusing and easy to get lost in.

Eames contines for a long time aimlessly through different hallways. He ends up on the far side in an oddly quiet ward. There’s no one rushing around here, and even the typical visitors seem absent. A long term care ward, he supposes.

He makes his way down one of the adjacent halls, carefully avoiding the staff, and ducks into the last room. He’s fairly certain he’s lost his tails, but it never hurts to be cautious. He might as well hang around a little while.

Eames looks over at what he’d assumed was an empty bed and pauses, abruptly brought up short.

The man fast asleep in the bed looks young, maybe late twenties, and is hooked up to a softly beeping machine through a couple of pads attached near his temples. The machine shows a steadily fluctuating line that doesn’t seem to deviate very much from the middle, nor very fast. There is an IV hooked into his arm, and he is lying so still the bed looks like it’s been made over top of him.

Eames grabs the chart hanging off the end of the bed curiously, using the strange amalgamation of medical jargon he’s picked up through the years to divine that the young man is in a coma, and judging by the name ‘John Doe’ scrawled at the top of the chart, he was when he got here.

“Hello, pet.” Eames greets him as he takes a final glance over the chart before putting it back. “Sorry to barge in unannounced like this but I need a place to hide for a little and I thought you could use the company.”

He pats a hand lightly on the boy’s greasy dark hair and smiles, despite the fact that the other man obviously can’t see him. “We might need to think about getting a haircut for you.” Eames says severely, eyeing the way it’s beginning to curl around the man’s ears. “And we definitely need to get rid of the beard.”

Eames glances around for the customary visitor’s chair and finds one tucked in the corner. A thin layer of dust reaffirms what he’s already gleaned about the man’s visitors, or lack thereof.

“You just don’t look like much of a beard person,” He continues aloud, “and it’s clearly not something you’ve been cultivating for too long.”

Eames drags the chair close enough that he can lean on the back two legs and put his feet up on the side of the mattress. “Don’t mind me. It’s not like you’re using the space.”

He wonders if the man were awake if he would care. If this man is the kind of person who would ask him politely to move his feet or just shove them off the side of the bed, possibly tipping him over in the process. “I think you’d let me get away with this.” He decides. He might be biased.

There’s a long silence, and Eames huffs. “Not much of a conversationalist then, are you?”

He waits a beat to give the comatose man a chance to reply, glancing without any real hope at his face for any sign of awareness, but John Doe doesn’t even twitch. “I suppose not…”

He glances at the readings on the screen beside him, but the lines are just the same as earlier.

“I wonder what happened to you to put you in here.” Eames muses. “Maybe a car accident? But then I didn’t see any mention of injuries in your file…not to mention the car probably would’ve given them a clue who you were…”

“You don’t by chance have an evil stepmother or stepfather who thinks you’re too pretty for your own good, do you?” Eames smiles at his own joke, rocking a little back and forth. “I could put out some adds for a prince charming if you like.”

“Me, I’m here to avoid getting shot.” Eames confides, stage whispering. “I seem to have upset someone with enough money or clout to send people after me. The only problem is that I have no idea which one. I’ve managed to upset quite a few people over the years, you understand. Not that they didn’t deserve it.”

“Anyways, I thought I should try to avoid my own hospital stay if I could help it. Not that there’s anything wrong with hospital stays. I’m sure the nurses are lovely.” Eames pauses.

“And the visitors aren’t half bad.” He adds with a smirk. “There’s always that.”

“Do you like books?” Eames asks after another long silence. “I’d offer to bring a movie but I don’t think you’ll be up to watching it. I could bring a book sometime though, maybe read to you a bit.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that plan.” He agrees. “If I had to listen to this machine all day I don’t think I’d bother to wake up either.” He reaches and presses a button, silencing it. The readings still rise and fall evenly on the screen, and if Eames thinks they look a tiny bit more frequent, well, that's between him and the machine.


	3. Day to Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oddly enough, there are very vague spoiler warnings for _Much Ado About Nothing_ in this chapter. Not that Shakespeare really needs spoiler warnings at this point.

“Morning love.” Eames greets the man in the bed, smiling as he settles into what has become _his_ chair in the course of the previous week.

Eames had been back the second day out of a sense of boredom and an altruistic side he hadn’t known he possessed. He had carefully decided to not examine his reasons when he kept coming back after that. It was simply something to do while he waited to make sure no one was watching for him at the airports or anything.

He pulls out the tattered second-hand copy of _Much Ado About Nothing_ and turns to the earmarked page they’d left off at. “Now if you recall, I believe we left off with Beatrice falling madly in love with Benedick…”

\--

“Looks like there’s another election coming up soon, Darling.” Eames notes absently, flipping through a local newspaper. “Though the choices seem a little limited, what with there being only two candidates who happen to be cousins.”

Eames flips the page loudly. “On the bright side there’s a new spring play opening at the local theater that promises lots of violent romantic comedy.” Eames squints at it. “I’m not entirely sure they know what those words mean but more power to them for trying I suppose.”

\--

“Hey Eames, interested in a new job?” Cam says in the way people do when they think they know what the answer will be. A couple of weeks ago Eames wouldn’t have hesitated unless he had other work. Not that too much work was usually the problem.

“What’s the target?” Eames tilts his head, looking down the street at the edge of the hospital just barely visible.

“You’re gonna have to come to the meet to find out. But I promise it’ll be worth your while.” Carson says.

It’s not terribly surprising. And Carson is usually good for keeping relatively competent company.

“When and where?”

\--

Eames leans on the side of the bed, glancing back and forth between the man in the bed and the notepad in his lap as he tries to get the overgrown fringe just right.

“You’re being an excellent model, you know. You should consider a career.”

Eames draws a few more lines. “With bone structure like yours I don’t think you’d have any trouble getting in.”

He traces the general shape of the man’s nose. “You might have to smile more often though, and I know how much you hate to show too much emotion.”

\--

“He’s in stable condition, there’s still a chance of recovery.” A woman’s voice says, coming from John Doe’s room.

Eames stops in his tracks and without an ounce of shame edges closer, pressing against the wall to listen in.

“It’s been weeks already with no change, the likelihood of him waking up at this point is negligible.” Another woman says briskly. Eames feels a slowly growing dread. “With no family coming forward to identify him we don’t even know if he’s got insurance or other conditions. Not to mention we need the bed anyways.”

There’s a short pause and Eames shifts away from the doorway, ready to pretend he was simply walking through if they come out.

“How soon should we pull the plug?”

“We’ll give him two more days. Pull it on the morning after.”

The feeling solidifies like lead in his chest, and Eames sinks into one of the other rooms just in time as the women begin to trek back into the rest of the hospital. He considers the possibility of simply letting this happen, but even before the idea is fully formed Eames knows he can’t do it.

He leaves the room and goes back out of the hospital and down the street to an arts and crafts store. He has to leave anyways, and there’s nothing he can do to make John Doe wake up, but he _can_ buy the man some time to wake up on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about how choppy this chapter was. I didn't want to drag you all through too much of just Eames.


	4. Drifting Away

Once, when Arthur was still a little kid, his family had gone to a lake for vacation. Nothing around but the water and the tiny little tent his father had bought on a whim when he decided last minute to make the trip.

They’d had to cut it short when they realized they hadn’t brought a camp stove, but Arthur remembers spending the whole day just laying on an air mattress floating. The hot sun beating down from above and his hands and feet trailing in the cool water below as the breeze blew gently across his skin. He’d barely even opened his eyes, content with the strange new sensations.

Waking up, unable to open his eyes or move his limbs, feels a lot like that. He should be scared, probably panicked, but he’s not. His thoughts are ebbing and flowing like waves on the shore of his consciousness, and his body is like some strange, separate thing. Like a place his mind visits sometimes rather than a part of him.

Slowly, gradually, Arthur begins to notice things around him. It starts with the steady, constant beeping. He wonders if it’s always been there, and can’t think of a time it wasn’t. Then he feels too warm, and too cold in turns. There is no breeze here, but there is light beyond his eyelids. For a while he thinks it is the sun. Imagines that he is back on the air mattress, floating gently on the waves beneath him. It’s not sunlight though. It doesn’t carry the same warmth when it touches his skin. It doesn’t smell like the beach, either. 

Instead there is the dry, acrid scent of antiseptic.

The beeping slowly begins to grate more and more, like insects crawling beneath his skin. For the first time in a long while he concentrates on his limbs, trying to move them. 

Trying to open his eyes and find whatever is making the sound so he can tear it to pieces and scatter them.

Eventually even his annoyance fades. His limbs like his eyelids are not his own. He tries to remember how it felt to move them and can’t. It’s maddening.

He has no idea how long he floats there in his own head. Occasionally there are voices on the edges of his periphery, though never clear enough to understand, and he knows, in a vague sense, that he is in a hospital, even if he can’t remember why. It feels like an eternity before a voice finally breaks though the fog barrier in his mind.

“Hello, pet.” The vaguely British sounding man says, voice wavering as it becomes clearer in Arthur’s mind. As Arthur remembers how to string sounds together again so that they mean something.

The man goes on then, apologizing for barging in. Arthur doesn’t catch all of it, but he tries harder than he has in a long while to focus on the world around him. The man rambles on about haircuts and car accidents, and even though Arthur’s pretty sure that’s not what happened he would give anything to hear the voice keep going. He’s been alone in his head for too long now. The stark reality of someone else, right there and trying to communicate makes it all the more clear how lost he’s been in his own head.

Arthur doesn’t want to stay there anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I have done absolutely no research into comas. Or insurance for that matter. This is doubtlessly wildly inaccurate.


End file.
